The floor of the Bathysphere was uncomfortably wet and cold with the ankle deep pool of cold seawater. But it rode just as reliably as the one that had brought them down into the depths and into Rapture.

The sight that greeted them when it emerged in at its destination and the door opened was a cruel one.

Ahead of them, up the small flight up stairs, a man had been strung up on chains, suspended on by the arms and by the neck. Long dried blood coating his body. The word Smuggler painted with it behind him.

"Now you've had the company of Andrew Ryan. He's the one who built this place, as I'm sure you've lads have gathered by now, and he's the one who run it into the ground. Nobody knows exactly what happened. Maybe he went mad. Maybe the power got to him. Maybe he just decided he didn't like the people. Whichever way you slice it, good men died. Me family's in a submarine in the foundations of Fountain Fisheries. I'll meet you there."

"Hey, if he can meet us there, why'd he need us? I thought the sthick was gettin to em and gettin them to safety?" Scout questioned.
"A good question. But one best posed when we see him face to face." The Spy said, giving a subtly nod to the radio in Jacks pocket.

"No Kings or Gods." The Heavy said, picking up a Bible from the suitcase left open on the bench below the strung up smuggling. Thumb running over the mildewed pages before he set it down again. "Not everyone shared this idea."
"It's in human nature to want to follow something or one." The Medic said simply "Even at the bottom of the sea, one cannot root out humanities draw to religion of one kind or another."
The golden busts of fists pulling on larges chains went ignored as they slipped their way past crates and a corpse in a deep sea divers suit. Climbing up over a pile of rubble.

The Medic paused once he was on the other side of the pile, and he bent down, pushing aside a few smaller pieces of rubble. Letting out a small, excited sound as his hand clasped around something, and when he stood straight the others could see what had elicited such excitement from their German companion. In his hands he proudly held the same strange needle machine the Little Sisters carried with them.
They could only hope the thing had merely been lost out of childish carelessness.

Fittingly, the door that rose up for them as they stepped in front of it was decorated with a handful of intricate fish and waves.
The tunnel it opened into was half wrecked. Partially flooded, but it looked to be passable. On the far wall, the shadow of a crouched woman shifted.

"I think they need to change their sign." The Sniper muttered, looking from the bodies tangled in seaweed, stuck suspended in the water outside the cracked glass wall, and the fallen sign declaring it had been Ninety-One days since the last work accident.
"What crawls in my garden?" The woman's grating voice echoed through the watery tunnel as they stepped into the water. Her shadow stood, and they watched as she leapt, her shadow disappearing from view.
"Sniper," The Spy said, and the young man met him with a small wave that said well enough he was already watching.

A hole in the ceiling further into the short tunnel explained where she had gone, and the body of a fellow Splicer spread out on floor besides a large trash fire explained what she'd been doing.
A pair of curved handles laid forgotten on the floor beside him, and the Pyro stopped to pick them up, offering them up to the Heavy, who took them with a small nod. The claws were a bit small for his large hands, but he could work with them. They'd certainly be effective with a good punch.

The next small section of tunnel had a one of the vents the little girls climbed in and out of, and a little station on the opposite wall marked with a red cross that they'd seen many of back in the medical pavilion.

The next door opened into a long, wide room made to look like docks. The air filled with the scents of salt, and fish, and damp. A Little Sister went skipping by ahead down below the in center of the sprawling chamber. A figure lumbered behind her, though it did not look like the others they had witnessed before. It was slighter and less bulky.
It wore the same sort of suit as the corpse they had passed by. And while the exact fate of the Little Sister it had once guarded was unknown, they knew it was more than likely a grim one.

But before any plan could be made to retrieve the child from its Frankenstein protector, the sound of gunfire cut short the girls humming, and she scrambled under one of the "Docks" as bullets pinged off the suit of the enraged Daddy.
It's attention turned towards the figures of splicers on the far side of the room, Scout ran to the edge of the wooden platform. "I'll grab the kid." No one objected. He was the fastest among their group, and one of the slightest. It would be easiest for him to slip underneath and grab the girl.
He'd barely touched the ground before he swore, and moved behind a sheet of metal that had been left leaning against the wooden dock. "Who the hell puts a gun there!" He dared to peer around the metal of a fraction of a second before ducking back as the turret blinking underneath the dock sprayed a fresh hail of bullets. Just enough time to register the frightened, unnatural eyes of the Little Sister hiding behind it.
Jack dropped down besides him, the pair sharing a nod as Jacks hand crackled with sparks. Carefully the two shuffled places, and Jack was the one who peered around the metal sheet, letting electricity fly from his hand. It found its mark, and the machine hissed and smoked with the overcharge of power. But the shower of sparks and the Scout sliding under the dock and giving the barrel of its gun a hard kick to disable it further earned a shriek from the girl, who scrambled away from the broken turret, turned the monsters attention to the young men. But instead of charged at them as the large, more lumbering version they were more familiar with had, it raised the strange gun it clutched in his gloved hands, and fired. Jack managed to throw himself out of the way, and the projectiles- a handfuls worth of rivets, of all thinks- thunked into the sheet metal behind him where his head had once been. Most of the splicers had already been dispatched by the creature, and the remaining ones either fell to the Mercenary bullets, or wisely limped away. Making themselves scarce in the face of not just the Big Daddy, but the large number of human adversaries.

Scout, squirming girl in arm pulled himself out from under the peer, hastily passing her to the Medic before he pulled his Pistol from his belt and leapt among the others and into the fray, who in turn brought the girl to Heavy.

When the creature finally went down, a pair of rivets had to be pulled from the soldiers side, but with some quick attention from the Medic he was fine. And cured, the girl let herself be given a boost into the vent they had passed by.
As soon as she had vanished, Dr Tenenbaums voice came softly through the radio. "You have shown kindness to my little ones…. But are you really friends to us? Regardless, a little one shall bring you a gift to demonstrate our appreciation. And more of what cures them."
"We wanna help, Ma'am. Admittedly we ain't usually on the right side of things, but we have standards." The Engineer replied. But if the Doctor heard, she made no reply.

"Well, least the fisheries close, 'cording to that door." The Sniper said, nodding at a door set into a wall to the right.
The inside past the door was even chillier than the large chamber, the floor mostly made up of an almost precariously wide grate. Men fell into a single file shuffle as they tried to avoid a pour of water coming from the ceiling. The Demomans foot nudged a fish that flopped helplessly on a sheet of metal that had been left laying over the grate back into the water as he passed.
The hall led out into another large room, and the Spy held up a hand, forcing everyone to a halt as he pointed out the small figure of a girl knelt before a Gatherers Garden, fiddling with something for a moment before she stood, and scurried off to to the vent on the far side of the wall. Leaving behind the large Teddybear she'd been adjusting.

They approached the pink bear cautiously, and Jack knelt down, extracting the little present tucked between its arms. Inside the box was a red vial marked with an A, two Plasmid bottles, and a small box of bullets. "A…. A for ADAM, y'think?" He said, passing the bottles and the vial to the Medic.
"Lets see… Yes, one of these is the same thing I injected Mikhail with. The other has quite an interesting label. "Hypnotize Big Daddy." Yes, quite interesting. Now, someone give their arm, two walking cures are better than one." He said, tucking the vial and one of the Plasmid bottles aside in his pouch for a moment.
"I'll do it." Jack said, rolling up his sleeve.
"Very good." The Medic said, filling the syringe that had come with the bottles with the glowing liquid, poking it in neatly.

"Say, whats with the ink, anyway?" The Scout asked, nodding over at the tattoo Jack bore on either of his wrists. "What, is it like some sorta symbolism thing?"
"My tattoos? I… don't know, to be honest." Jack replied, flexing his hand before he rolled up his sleeve as the medic tossed aside the empty bottle and syringe. "I've had them so long, I can't recall when I even got them or what in the hell for. Suppose it must have meant something at one point. Couldn't tell ya now." He shrugged.

"Now, my turn." The Medic said, pulling the other bottle and syringe from his pouch. Rolling up his own sleeve and pushing up a glove he was swift to fill and stab the needle into his own wrist. He gave a small, surprised sound, but he seemed indifferent to what had been staggeringly painful for the others who had spliced so far. "Fascinating sensation. I'm not sure why you all were such babies about it. I saw we should see if there's anything else in the Garden."
"I think we should leave well enough alone. Ain't worth the trouble of breaking another one." Jack protested.
"Nonsense, I'm sure there's no need to destroy it. Herr Spy, if you would." The Medic said, stepping aside and motioning for the Spy to step forward.
A roll of the mans eyes said what he thought of the doctors idea, but he stepped forward, pulling a rectangular device familiar to everyone but Jack. He held the machine close to the Garden, fiddling with the dials for a few moments before he pressed it against the side of it, and the speakers let out a short, high pitched whine of its sales pitch as it sparked, and a pair of bottles came tumbling out.

The Demoman stooped to pick them up, reading the label before he let out a small laugh. "Sonic Boom, and Winter Blast… Well, if we're turning ourselves into monsters, I ken who oughtae get these." One he tossed to the Soldier, and with a cheeky grin he tossed the other to the Heavy.
The Soldier didn't bother to wait. Quickly filling his syringe and jabbing it quickly. The man faltered for a moment, clutching at his helmet for a moment before he let out a booming laugh. "Now that's got a kick to it!" He made an enthusiastic gesture, and the resulting blast of air that sent the teddybear on the floor, and nearly him, flying, answered to how this new power worked.
The Heavy however, simply shrugged and passed the bottle to the doctor, holding out his hand. He held it up with some fascination as frost traveled down his arm. He gave a testing squeeze of his fist, and let out little more than a small grunt of discomfort as small spikes of ice shot through his hand. With another flex he shattered the icicles, wiping the frost away on the side of his vest.

"Now, I suggest we move on. The sign leads below." The spy said, tucking the device back into his suit as he made his way towards the stairs. The way had been blocked by a wall of crates, the stench of rot strong from the decaying fish within each one. But large posts had been leaned down, and while a touch precarious, was manageable to climb up onto the roof of one of the shed, and jump down before the door.

The sight of a corpse leaned against a pillar greeted them, but no one paid it any mind as they stepped inside. Behind it was another door marked for Fontaine Fisheries, and a defunct conveyor belt. Jack was the one to step up to the door, and seeing no handle, gave it a few cautious knocks with the end of his wrench. "Hello? Atlas?" The Judas window set into the heavy door slid open, and a man obscured by a welders mask met looked on from the other side of the door.

"Atlas radioed on ahead," The man said, his voice strained and raspy. "Says you're all looking for an invite to the fisheries. Nuts, I say. But if'n you heads up to the wharf master's office, and find ol Peach a research camera, maybe I could manage some invites."
But before anyone could reply to the mans demand, something above made a noise. The awful sound of metal being dragged against metal.
"Up there." The Sniper said, leveling his SMG towards the ceiling.
"You, my friends, are fucked." The man called apparently called Peach said, slinging the window closed as a figure dropped from the ceiling, and the sniper opened fire.

The woman seemed oblivious to the pain of the bullets that ripped through her, but the crash of air the Soldier sends her way has her flying back, and opens up a chance for the Scout to dart in close, and put out a fatal shot.

"Perhaps you're not all delicate flowers after all." The man said through the door. "Look on the conveyor belt. You'll find something to help keep you alive. Now, go get that camera, and get me snapshots of one of them that crawl on the ceiling. Then I'll let you into the fisheries."
"Peach, was it? I will only say this once. We are mercenaries, not errand boys or photographers!" The spy said, but his words fell on decidedly deaf ears, and the window shut before he'd even finished his sentence. But the grate beside the door opened, and from the belt within it came a welcome sight that the Demoman was quick to snatch up, pressing the cold metal of the Grenade launcher to his lips. "Pure beauty. Felt naked as a puppy without on'a these."

"Just remember, friends," The Judas slid open once more, "I smell an ounce of Fontaine on you, and I'll have you all in boxes! Atlas gives you the vouch, but I ain't turning my eye just on his say so!"

"We haven't even met anybody called Fontaine," Jack said as the window slammed shut, and with a collective shrug the group turned. The sooner they had their quarry, the sooner they could move on, and hopefully get out of this underwater hell.

"Grown man jumpin' at ghosts." Atlas' sneered through the radio. "Fontaine's dead, and everybody knows it. In the ground for months, and half the place still jumping at his shadow… Christ, even Ryan. You never mind all that. We've got work to do."
"We?" The Sniper muttered as they passed through the door once more. "We're the bloody dogs sent to play fetch."

The way forward was found easily enough on a sign, pointing the way down a hall on the far side of the room, and up a short flight of stairs before another sign marked the way. At the top of the next flight loomed a much smaller, but no less red banner than the ones they'd seen before.

A Man Creates. A Parasite asks "Where is my share?"

The door they eventually came through was a bit less helpful, a pair of signs marking the way for "Fighting MacDonagh's" and "Jet Postal"

But the rumbling sound of a Big Daddy was more pressing than the lack of direction towards their new destination.
Two splicers were already fast after the thing and its small charge. So distracted they didn't even notice the spy slipping up between them until the first fatal bullet found its home it the back of the firsts skull. The other hardly had time to react before the Soldier was on him, has hands twisting the mans neck at an unnatural angle.

"Go," Said the Heavy, turning to Jack. "You get little girl and cure her, I will help kill the Father." "Right." The Russian made for the fray with the others, where the Scout was already making himself a nuisance to the creature as he dodged the swings of its gun as it tried to swat him away with it. Though they looked a bit less lumbering and heavy than the more rounded kind they had first encountered, this kind of Daddy proved much slower, clearly more reliant on fighting at a longer range with its gun.
Jack split off from the group, creeping back a long away around the room around a large stack of crates in the room, pausing once as the sight of a recorder sitting forlornly on a workbench caught his eye, and he was quick to snatch it before he snuck closer to the Little Sister, who stood off to the side, shouting for her monstrous protector to kill them all.
She shrieked as he snatched her up, and the thing turned, but a blast from the Scouts shotgun against its head was a strong distraction, and with one arm keeping a firm hold he mimicked what the Heavy had done.
It was only a few moments after he'd set the girl down and ushered her away from the fighting that the creature fell with a groan, landing in a heavy heap on the floor.

"How many of these things d'you think they made?" The Sniper asked, reloading his gun.
"A fair number, If I had to guess." The Medic replied. "Perhaps not mass produced- I don't think the procedure that bonded the flesh to the metal as we saw with the one is one that one can do quickly, and probably not cheaply, either. But judging by the size of the city, I would guess a few dozen at the very least."
"That's a lot of kids." The Scout muttered, poking at the monster with the end of his bat.

"It is, but we can at least get the kids we can. Do a little good down here." Jack said, tossing the recording he'd found to Spy. "Here, saw that when I went for the girl."

"I saw one of the smugglers having a game of catching on the docks today." Came Tenenbaums voice when the Spy pressed the button. "And this surprised me, because his hands were crippled during the war. He was unloading the barge the other day, when he was bitten from this sea slug. He woke up the next morning and found that he could move his fingers for the first time in years. I asked him if he still had that sea slug. As luck would have it, he did."

"A sea slug? Fascinating." The Medic murmured thoughtfully. "A new species undiscovered by surface dwellers, perhaps? I should like to see one for myself."
"We're not here for you to play around in fishing crates, Doctor." The Spy said crisply. "We've delayed enough as it is."
"Yes, yes, as you've said. Still, should we come across any slugs of any kind…."

The way forward was blocked by a gate of iron bars, but the padlock that held it shut was broken easily enough by a forceful swing of the Engineers wrench.
Red light gently swinging back and forth from somewhere above the stairs told them, as much as the warning signs, that there were security measures ahead.

In the corner closest to the stairs was one of the clownish vending machines, and sitting forgotten beside it on a pallet, another recorder.

"I will get the camera." The Spy said before he vanished. But it was only a moment before he appeared again beside the Soldier. "It's set too high in the wall for me to reach. Someones going to have to shock it, and another will have to come up while its down and give me a boost, if we don't want this thing tripping any alerts."
"I'll zap it." Said the Engineer. "I'm a quick enough draw. Tavish, think you could manage the stairs quick enough?"
"Aye, I think so." The Scotsman replied, his eye following the light for a moment.
"Give me a moment to get to the top, into its blind spot, then make your move." The Spy said, gone from sight before he even finished speaking.
They waited a few long beats before the Engineer sidled up along the wall towards the bottom of the stairs, the Demoman on his heels.
He waited until the swing of the light was looking the other way before he jumped out enough, bolts of electricity flying from his ungloved hand, earning a satisfactory crackle as the camera above overloaded, and the Demoman hurried up the stairs two at a time. The Engineer ducked back out of the cameras sight, and the Demoman fumbled up the last few steps and beside the waiting Spy just in time for the camera to resume his swivel.

With a bit of teamwork, the Spy precariously up on the Demomans shoulders, the sparked again for a final time.
The Heavy stooped to grab the once discarded recorder as the rest of the group made for the stairs, pressing the button as they reached the landing.

"This Fontaine fellow is somebody to watch." Andrew Ryan sounded contemplative. "Once, he was just a menace, to be convicted and hung. But he always manages to be where the evidence isn't. He's the most dangerous type of hoodlum… the kind with vision."

"By the things we've heard so far, it seems this Fontaine had his fingers in many pies." The Spy mused, before he nodded at the next set of steps, and the slowly moving, soft red light of another camera. "Careful."

The Camera at the top of the stairs was set at a much more reasonable height, and it was only a few seconds after the Spy disappeared again that he called out for them to follow after him. Ahead, finally was the Wharf master's office.

"The research camera looks just like the ones you'd see topside. According to this magazine article I just scrounged up, it can also analyze genetic information, parse biological structures, and lots of other five dollar words." Crackled Atlas' voice.
"So it's more than just some toy to take pretty pictures." Jack said, adjusting the radio in his pocket.
"Wouldn't mind having one of those myself, if it can really do all that and more." The Engineer said.

The door was another made of iron bars, and held shut by a padlock.
But as Jack moved to raise his wrench to strike it, he collapsed. Red blooming against the pale cream of his sweater under the sound of gunfire.
"Shit, sentry!" The Engineer shouted, carefully angling himself to shoot the lock apart with his pistol and the Spy vanished. The gate door sliding up into the ceiling the only indication of where he had went until there was the sound of sparking and misfiring from the room beyond.

But by the time the Medic can kneel besides him, Jack is gone.

Literally.

Like much of what they'd witnessed in Rapture, it almost defied explanation as his very body vanished, and after a testing reach, is truly gone, and not simply invisible to the eye as the Spy's cloaking.
"The hell'd he go?" The Engineer said as they puzzled at the spot on the floor Jack had crumpled to. A few spots of fresh blood the only evidence the young man had been there.
Unless the bullets had some sort of teleportational properties, it made little sense how he could have vanished.

It was the Sniper who held up a hand, silencing the others into a hush with the gesture.

It was faint, but there from down the hall and stairs they had come from, came the sound of retching.
Sharing a silent nod with the other young mercenary, the scout gripped his shotgun and took off down the hall.
It was only a moment before his voice rang out, colored by surprise. "Holy shit, Jack!"

It was enough to draw the rest of the group back out into the hall, backtracking the way they'd come.
The Scout stood beside Jack, who had one hand pressed against the wall to steady himself. Looking a bit pale with shock, and a few red stains dotting his sweater, but otherwise none the worse for wear, and most certainly alive. It was clear, the closer they got, that the sound of retching they heard had come from him. Behind the young men the Vita-chamber they had passed gave off a light, crackling glow.
"Son, how in the hell did you end up back here?"
Jack shook his head, wiping the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. "Hell if I know. I got-shit, I got shot!"
"Freakin sucks, don't it?" Scout said, giving him another consolatory pat on the back.
"And you… ended up here?" The Engineer said, eyeing the chamber behind them. Jack nodded.
"Next thing I know, I come stumblin' outta there."

"Fascinating!" The Medic said, stepping closer between Jack and the chamber, looking between the two. "In the event of death, these chambers must act as singular, localized respawn chambers!"
"If that were true, Doc, we'd be seeing a lot less corpses round here. And be seeing folks we put down again." The Engineer said, stepping up beside him.
"I'm certainly open to hearing your theories, Herr Conagher, but as the evidence stands thats the most likely theory until we can run some other tests-"
"Sorry to interrupt, but are you saying I died?" Jack cut in sharply.
"Oh, yes. Very much so." The Medic replied with a casual shrug of his shoulders. "The angle those bullets went in, in my medical opinion they would have been fatal- a very quick death, lucky for you."
"Its the ones that make you last a while that suck the most." The Scout said.

"So, this begs the question of why has it brought him back, but no one else." The Spy said, pulling a cigarette from its case.
"That's whats most curious." The Medic said, glancing back up at the chamber.
"A mystery we don't have time for, unfortunately." The Engineer said, a hint of disappointment in his own voice.
"C'mon, Pal. I know how much your first time dyin' sucks." The Scout said, the hand on Jacks back urging him away from the wall.

"There were other security measures." The Spy said, walking ahead of the group. "I will disable them." By the time the rest rounded the corner once more, the Spy was gone, and they waited, no one else eager to test if the chambers would bring them back as well.

"It's clear." He said, walking around the corner from inside the room after a few minutes. "Two defunct cells, two blocked doors, and another we'll need to break the padlock from. Beyond is a hole in the wall, not all of use will fit through it unless we blow it bigger."
"Easy enough." The Demoman said. "We'll send you skinny blokes first tae fetch the camera, and I'll make it so the rest of us can fit through."

The Scout, Spy, Jack, and Sniper were sent along through the hole, and the plan worked well enough to get the others through after.
But a nearby pipe proved to have been damaged, and the Demoman had barely time to call out the warning to hit the floor before the room rocked under a second explosion as the gas pipe burst. Sending debris blocking the hole they had entered through, and opening up a section of wall next to it.

Most were shaking off pebbles and dust from the wall when the others came running from the hall they had gone down, an expensive looking camera clutched in Jacks hands.
"Bloody hell happened." The Sniper said, sharp eyes traveling from the now blocked hole, and the gaping hole in the wall.
"Bloody hell y'think happened?" The Demoman replied. "Bloody reason I haven't been keen on making things explode since we've been down here happened."

"Looks like unless we want to risk bringing the whole room down on us, we ain't going back the way we came." The Engineer said, flicking a piece of plaster from his shoulder.

The hole opened up to a bit of metal awnings above shops. In the space down below a splicer pathetically swiped at the air below a security camera, like a cat trying to swipe at a bird just out of reach, hysterically half sobbing, half laughing. Beyond was a building marked by a large sign of a shirtless man with a roosters head standing in a boxing pose.

A neat shot from the Spy's revolver took care of the issue of the Splicer, and carefully, the men made to climb down the precarious metal holds.
The only way forward, unless they wanted to risk blowing the metal bars apart, was through the tavern beyond the marked door.

The Sniper stopped for a moment as something apparently caught his eye, and from a crate full of half rotted fish, he pulled out a recorder.
With a shrug he tossed it to the Medic.

"This little sea slug has come along and glued together all the crazy ideas I've had since the war…." Came Tenenbaums voice. "It doesn't just heal damaged cells, it… resurrects them… I can bend the double helix… Black can be reborn White, Tall short, weak, strong… But the slugs alone are not enough… I'll need money… and one other thing…."
"Crazy's a kind word for it." Jack said, shaking his head.